Poem: Crater Lake

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Crater Lake,

You purest expression of water

Your most vivid blue statement

Your clarity less obstructed than the water in my own eyes

You frighten me.

You rip the meaning from my life

And dangle me over the checker square farms

Higher

High enough that Mount Everest looks like a pimple

Storm clouds look like plum blossoms floating to earth

The Pacific Ocean looks like a waveless bowl.

I shuffle down your volcanic slopes

Lusted after by gravity

Choking on the dust

My resisting stomps kick up.

I see the wake of a boat

Ghastly white

Slice through your windless, still surface

Carving grooves that roll outwards, softly.

I remove my sweat-moistened clothes

And then I contaminate you

By jumping in.

I peer at your depths

With goggles strapped across my forehead.

I can see everything

Every boulder frozen under the weight of your shores

As if I could reach out and take then between my fingers

Like a child holding a coin to the moon

To judge its size.

I crawl along the top of your water

Towards your center.

The boulders shrink below me

Until they can fit in a spice jar

But their grainy multitude is still evident

Because your purity is cleaner than air

There is no haze on your horizon.

One stroke further

Before the giant boulders dissolve into each other

Below my feet

And all that remains under me is a slab

The size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

I am higher than a fighter jet.

Roadways would be too small to see distinctly

But their presence felt

Like wrinkles in an ancient face

Seen from across the street.

The slab grows to mountainous proportions

With another two strokes.

The Great Pyramid is a pimple on this desert

Splayed below my feet

Sinking like a continent

Deeper and deeper.

And then:

Nothing.

I am smaller than a pebble

Examined in the calloused hand

Of a hill giant

Wedged in the fold of his love line.

I hang over the pure blue my eyes cannot pierce

Too light to sink

Too small to be spotted

By gravity.

Nothing!

Crater Lake

You rob me of my substance.

You roll me into myself

Smaller and denser

A ball of dough

Until I am too small to see

A crumb

Unnoticeable

Unimportant

No matter what it thinks of itself.

And what lies beyond?

I am too afraid to swim farther

But I might guess:

More nothing.

All the clarity in the world

Can only illuminate a fraction of what I don’t know.

I need but ten strokes to return to shore.

Throwback Photos: Crater Lake for the Perseid Meteor Shower

It seems that the photo experiment in the last post went off with a smash, so now there's nothing holding me back from posting my photos on the blog anymore (for those of you who don't remember, I ran out of space on Blogger to upload new photos, as described here). So I'm going to go back in time to this summer when Courtney, Rebecca, and I all headed down to Crater Lake for a weekend to watch the dazzling Perseid Meteor Shower at its peak.

I'd like to get started by sharing an article, though. Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, is taking what's called a SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge, which asks people to try eating as much (or little) food as someone can get with food stamps. In New Jersey it's $30 a week, or about $4 a day. The idea is to raise awareness about the struggles of the poor who rely on food stamps and demonstrate the argument that food stamps should provide a greater benefit. I don't think I'd have a chance to stick to this challenge, but kudos to Booker for his efforts (remember, this is the guy who rescued a neighbor from a burning house, too). And it only took a couple additional clicks of research to learn that Barbara Lee has also taken the challenge. As if I needed another reason to like her. Sweet!

Anyway, onwards to photos and memories!

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States. It was once a volcano, but the crater filled up with water (hence the name). Geologically speaking, this happened rather recently, only a few thousand years ago. This makes it one of the most pristine and haunting bodies of water I've ever seen.

The soil is also apparently very fertile.

This is called the "Phantom Ship." You can just make out the other end of the shore. Often Crater Lake is clear as can be and you can see everything, but when we visited forest fire season was in high gear. A lot of the sediment was trapped in the crater and made viewing difficult. But when we made it to the shore, we could see under all the haze. The water cleaned up the air just above it and we could see clearly across to the other side. Remarkable.

This is where we swam. Yes, we swam in a volcano. You're allowed to be jealous.

The walls of the crater. They keep dropping like this even in the water. Swim out about the length of a pool and you can't even see the bottom anymore, even though the water is crystal clear. It was the smallest and weakest I've ever felt. It was like I was a tiny hovering speck above an abyss, especially since I could see the gigantic rock walls shoot down and down farther than vision. A highly recommended experience!

I didn't get any photos of the meteors themselves - my nighttime super long exposure photography isn't quite up to par yet - but I did get this shot of Watchman Point, where we watched from, as we waited for the sky to blacken. The stars shot across the entire sky throughout the night in all sorts of colors: blue, orange, red, white, and green. Just dazzling! My buddy Kirk took a shot of the shower you can see here.